Re: @Ruby on my brusqueness
LW/EA has more “world saving” orgs than just Leverage. Implicit to “world saving” orgs, IMO, is that we should tolerate some impropriety for the greater good. Or that we should handle things quietly in order to not damage the greater mission.
I think that our “world saving” orgs ask a lot of trust from the broader community—MIRI is a very clear example. I’m not really trying to condemn secrecy I am just pointing out that trust is asked of us.
I recognize that this is inflammatory but I don’t see a reason to beat around the bush:
Leverage really seems like a cult. It seems like an unsafe institution doing harmful things. I am not sure how much this stuff about Leverage is really news to people involved in our other “world saving” orgs. I think probably not much. I don’t want “world saving” orgs to have solidarity. If you want my trust you have to sell out the cult leaders, the rapists, etcetera, regardless of whether it might damage your “world saving” mission. I’m not confident that that’s occurring.
That’s a good thing to assert.
It seems preeeetty likely that some leaders in the community knew more or less what was up. I want people to care about whether that is true or not.
I get this sentiment, but at the same time I think it’s good to be clear about what is at stake. It’s easy for me to interpret comments like “Reminder that Leverage 1.0 is defunct and it seems very unlikely that the same things are going on with Leverage 2.0” as essentially claiming that, while post-mortems are useful, the situation is behind us.
Simply put, if I were a victim, I would want to speak up for the sake of accountability, not shared examination and learning. If I spoke up and found that everyone agreed the behavior was bad, but we all learned from it and are ready ot move on, I would be pretty upset by that. And my understanding is that this is how the community’s leaders have handled other episodes of abuse (based on 0 private information, only public / second hand information).
But I am coming into this with a lot of assumptions as an outsider. If these assumptions don’t resonate with any people who are closer to the situation then I apologize. Regardless sorry for stirring shit up with not much concrete to say.